DeMarco Cavil, owner of Momma's Kitchen in St. Paul, came out of the kitchen to greet numerous friends and customers, including Twauna M., Monday, Sept. 17, 2018. At the soft opening customers filled the lobby and spilled out onto the street as they placed and waited for their orders. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

Thomas Smith batters chicken wings in Momma's Kitchen in St. Paul, Monday, Sept. 17, 2018. At the soft opening customers filled the lobby and spilled out onto the street as they placed and waited for their orders. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

At the soft opening of Momma's Kitchen in St. Paul, customers filled the lobby and spilled out onto the street as they placed and waited for their orders, Monday, Sept. 17, 2018. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

There’s a reason the owner of St. Paul’s freshest soul-food restaurant invited a homicide commander to his opening.

The story of Momma’s Kitchen, which opened last week on the city’s East Side, begins with co-owner DeMarco Cavil’s momma: A woman he last heard from eight years ago.

“Coming home tomorrow,” she told him on the phone, from her hospital room. She checked in for stomach pains. “Making you your favorite yellow cake,” the one with chocolate frosting.

The next morning, just before the sun rose on his 24th birthday, the phone rang again. A nurse, waking him to tell him the 44-year-old woman who sheltered Cavil his entire life was “unresponsive.” Complications from pancreatic cancer.

He rushed with his brother to the hospital and sat in a cold room, stunned.

His brother, Courtney Cavil, had been in plenty of brushes with the law. One cop, in particular, showed up at the hospital. It was the first time DeMarco Cavil met the cop — but he always remembered it.

“They were like, ‘What do we do?’ ” said that cop, now St. Paul police Senior Cmdr. Tina McNamara. “Their whole world was her. She took care of everything, took care of all the boys in the neighborhood. She was the go-to, the caregiver for those kids. They just didn’t have anybody else to call.”

McNamara saw the way the brothers were sitting, and made a simple gesture.

“Have you guys eaten?” she asked. Within the hour, she brought them dinner.

‘I JUST NEED A JOB’

“My mother, being a single mother, she’s always preaching ‘Take the right path, don’t be in the streets.’ It was already hard enough for her raising us boys without a father in the home,” Cavil said.

The family lived in a rough building with a reputation: the “white building,” at Bates Avenue and East Seventh Street, since torn down.

His brother and plenty of friends racked up felonies and jail time. One of his best friends — who would often crash at his mother’s apartment — was the oldest founder of the East Side Boys gang.

But Cavil stayed out of trouble. As a junior at Johnson High School, at age 16, his girlfriend told him she was pregnant. So he made another choice. He walked into the new Embers restaurant being built on Payne Avenue.

“I said, ‘Hey, I got a kid on the way, going into junior year in high school, I just need a job.’ ”

They gave him a job in the dish room. Thirty days later, they asked if he could cook.

‘HE WANTS TO BE A CHEF’

Soon after, he approached chef Michael Harper.

Harper, now executive chef of the Mendakota Country Club in Mendota Heights, was the first American to be admitted to Westminster Technical College’s culinary school in London, back in the early 1970s. His old business, Wild Side Catering, catered to the Minnesota Wild.

Harper didn’t know how Cavil knew he was hiring; he never advertised.

“I remember interviewing DeMarco and I thought, ‘Who is this kid? He has no experience whatsoever,’ ” Harper said. “He really had no skills at all. General cooking knowledge, he had none. But he’s talking like he wants to be a chef. And for me, that hit right in my wheelhouse.

“He was willing.”

Harper hired him — and soon learned to lean on the kid.

“DeMarco became very, very good with production. He could set up a party, almost on his own. He grasped the production side of the kitchen. It was flavor as well; it wasn’t just, ‘OK, I have to prepare 2,800 meals.’ He was very good at it.”

Thomas Smith batters chicken wings in Momma’s Kitchen in St. Paul, Monday, Sept. 17, 2018. At the soft opening customers filled the lobby and spilled out onto the street as they placed and waited for their orders. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

Harper grew to admire Cavil in other ways.

“Being a chef is a lifestyle. There’s no time for extracurricular activities, there’s no time for excuses. … It’s hard when your outside life is just a mess, and there’s so many avenues you can go to. I told him, I said, ‘You’ve gotta choose, son. It’s your choice.’ ”

Over the next eight years at St. Paul’s RiverCentre, Cavil served thousands. But he also cooked personal dinners for VIPs like former President Bill Clinton, basketball star Magic Johnson and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

He soon became sous chef for the Wild, executive chef at a couple of stadiums down south, and later sous chef at Target Center in Minneapolis and CHS Field in St. Paul’s Lowertown.

It was during CHS Field’s first year that he ran into a familiar face.

‘YOU REMEMBER ME?’

In the stadium’s opening weeks, McNamara — who was put in charge of security — heard someone behind her, calling her name.

He still remembered the first day they met, that dinner she brought, on the hardest day of his life. “You’ll never have to pay for a meal from me,” Cavil told her.

Soon, other officers at the field got to know Cavil closely.

“He kept talking about opening a restaurant,” said longtime St. Paul officer Benny Williams. “We said, ‘When it does, we’ll come out and support you.’ And lo and behold …”

The officers also rallied around Cavil when they heard how he grew up.

“We were always telling him, ‘It’s not important where you been, it’s where you’re going,’ ” Williams said.

Roughly a dozen officers showed up for Cavil’s opening Monday.

Cavil said he could likely have opened a restaurant anywhere — but chose his old neighborhood for a reason.

“It means so much more to me,” he said. “I just wanna show some of these young inner-city kids there’s something else you can do.

“I grew up, I’ve seen, I’ve lost so many friends to prison or jail or death. Kids I see today, they’re like, ‘Oh, you own the restaurant on Maryland. That’s so cool.’ It just shows them, ‘Hey, I can do this.’ ”

In addition to hiring locally, Cavil said he hopes to mentor kids looking to find jobs elsewhere in the restaurant field.

Momma’s Kitchen, at 1058 E. Maryland Ave., is a tribute to Southern home cooking, with fried chicken, catfish and gumbo — though Cavil particularly touts his mac and cheese. A tribute to his mother and grandmother’s cooking, he says.

“They have a world-class chef that’s going to open that restaurant,” Harper said. “They should be very proud of that kid. He’s faced adversity, he’s faced challenges, and I admire that.”

Cavil, along with his business partner, Hamza Muridi — another friend from his younger days — also is working to open the Gold Room Restaurant and Lounge at Sixth Street and Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis in coming months.

“I’m proud of him for making it, the man he’s become,” McNamara said. “He’s not ashamed of where he came from, and he still stands by his friends.”

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